Your Window Into the Innovation Economy

In 2022, U.S. companies posted nearly 68,600 openings for cybersecurity analysts — a common entry-level role in Security Operations Centers (SOCs). Three years later, that number has dropped nearly 50% to just 36,000. That shift is not the result of a recession or hiring freeze. It’s happening during a time of elevated cyber risk and persistent workforce shortages. The underlying reason is something more structural: AI has begun to automate away the first layer of cybersecurity work.

The foundational bottlenecks of technology have shifted from software layers to physical constraints like energy, critical minerals, and manufacturing capacity — now the true rate-limiters to AI and reindustrialization. As megawatts and metals become the new protocols of progress, venture-scale opportunities lie in upgrading power infrastructure, securing domestic mineral supply chains, and accelerating extraction, refining, and recycling. The Energy & Strategic Minerals Syndicate is backing the founders building solutions for this new industrial frontier, where power availability and resource resilience define the future of innovation.